


What's in a Name?

by Eissel



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Angst and Feels, Backstory, Character Study, F/M, Ishbal | Ishval, Ishval Civil War, Minor Character Death, Names, Philosophy, Symbolism, Symbolism Taken Far too Literally on the Part of the Author, Time Skips, Trust me there is a lot of grand moralizing and rationalization about names here, Young Royai
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:27:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21727498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eissel/pseuds/Eissel
Summary: “Names are much like scars, right?”“I guess I can see what you’re getting at.”Roy and Riza discuss names throughout their lives.(Or: To what extent does destiny influence reality?)
Relationships: Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang
Comments: 3
Kudos: 47





	What's in a Name?

**Author's Note:**

> I’m using mantle in the sense of the cloak/figurative “taking up” of a position of authority, just clarifying for ease of reading.

**I -** “I never actually told you my full name.” He blurts out one afternoon. 

“Mr. Mustang?” She asks, looking up from her schoolwork. “Is something the matter?”

“No.” He says, doodling on his sheet of paper. “It just popped into my head randomly.” Alchemists, couldn’t keep a straight thought to save their lives. 

“Would you like to tell me then?” She offers, even putting her book down to give him her full attention. 

“It’s Roy Kin Hei Mustang.” He says, putting his pencil to his lips. “Strange right?”

“Why do you say that?”

“That’s not what it says on my birth certificate.” Riza no longer has to feign interest in what he’s talking about. The discrepancy merited a conversation in order to suss out the truth. 

“Then what does it say?”

“Roy Mustang, it drops pretty much everything.” Riza thinks for a moment, mirroring him as she taps her pencil to her lips. 

“Maybe they were trying to protect you?” He looked a little disquieted by that.

“I hope not.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Names have power Ms. Hawkeye, losing one’s name means losing a part of one’s self.”

 **II -** Riza means a lot of things. It can mean “to harvest”, it can mean “satisfaction.” 

Riza wonders if her father named her, because it would only make sense. Only Berthold Hawkeye would name a child in such a way that they would grow to defy it. 

She kneels in the dirt, and tries to coax the poor rose back to life. For a few days, it looks like her efforts are paying off. 

When she walks out 4 days after she first started, the roses are dead, petals cracked and brownish. 

So she may not be able to harvest, but it wasn’t like satisfaction was her forte either. Her father never looked at her with an ounce of love after her mother died, and the townspeople weren’t exactly welcoming to the child of a shut-in alchemist.

~~She ignores that the young apprentice seeks out her company frequently. She ignores his soft smiles and light blushes.~~

**III -** “Names are like scars.” Riza declares on the couch one day.

“I guess I can see that.” Roy replies, setting his papers down. “What brought this up?”

“I was thinking about your name.”

“Why?”

“Your first name means king, my father’s first name means bright ruler. It’s like you were destined to meet.”

“Destiny isn’t real.”

“Destiny is what you make of it.” she retorts. “But that’s certainly strange right? Two people with names connected to a position of power meeting, and one of them mentoring the other?”

“I see your point.”

“Do you like your name?”

“I guess.”

“You guess?” Roy falls silent, thinking about the time when his mother explained what his name meant in full. 

“It’s cool enough.”

“You know, I never found out what your middle names meant. They’re in Xingese right?”

Roy doesn’t reply.

Riza doesn’t ask again.

 **IV -** “If names are scars, titles are mantles.” He tells her in the hollow under the stairs. 

“Alchemists are fastidious creatures.”

“ _Be thou for the people._ ” He replies absentmindedly. “Can a title retain meaning if it juxtaposes itself?”

“Can it?” She asks back. “Brilliancy and madness go hand in hand, yet one causes the downfall of the other. Some would say that alchemists are no more than weapons, and yet, some still abide by that oath. Juxtapositions, yet the word retains concrete meaning, of one who practices alchemy, even if it does not hold subjectively.” 

“If names are scars, and titles are mantles, are you then lesser without a title?” Her breath hitches in her throat.

“Not all scars are bad, and not all mantles are welcome.” She says at last, nursing the tin cup of tea he hands her. 

The metallic taste clings to her tongue, much like the flowery taste of the teas her mother used to make.

 **V -** “Hawkeye.” She licks her lips. “It means farsighted. Isn’t it fitting?” 

“Very.” He says, leaning against the house. “Mine means wild, untamed horse.”

“Fitting.” She says, ignoring his squawk of dissent and lining up her reticle with the target. Her hands are steady as she pulls the trigger. “How’d I do?” She asks, lowing the gun.

“Perfect, as usual. Man, Hawkeye, what a name.”

She covers her smile with her hand, and looks away.

 **VI -** “Alchemists, what unfaithful creatures.” He says, as he kneels in chalk dust, sunlight catching in his hair. Riza watches him over the top of her book. 

“What brings this on?”

“Just something one of your neighbors said. Made a fuss about how your father hasn’t brought us to church.” He chuckles. “She’s right though.”

“Is she?” She thinks of her father, a slave to his passion, thinks of the teenager on the floor in front of her, dutifully sketching out circles. “Alchemists are devoted creatures.”

“But devout?” He presses his hands to the circle, and the room is awash with eerie blue light. His kneeling silhouette is emphasized by it, the wind generated ruffles his hair and scatters the light further, bouncing spots of blue, purple, red, black, and yellow off the wall. Riza could take the scene, paint it, and some would call it religious. It certainly _looked_ enough like a stained glass window come to life.

~~Some would call it heretical.~~

“You could make an allowance.”

“I am not your father.”

“Parallelisms reveal more than you would think Mr. Mustang.” Sparks of madness lay inside every alchemist, it was just a question of if they would let it consume them.

 **VII -** “Roy means king.” She whispers in the hollow under the stairs. “But king of what?” 

“Of the wild and untamed things maybe?” He presses himself closer to her, and she reciprocates. 

“That seems silly.”

“Sillier than a satisfaction of far sight?” she moves to kiss him, and the action erases all thoughts of their conversation. “We’re more alike than you know.”

“Don’t patronize me.” He chuckles, and Riza stops herself from melting in his arms. 

“I’m not, Ms. _Hawk_ eye.” 

He always had to get the last word, didn’t he?

 **VIII -** He leaves, as he was always wont to. 

He does not spare tears for her, and nor she for him.

He is wild, and untamed, and free, and she will not chain him down.

(But he _will_ come back.)

 **IX -** Riza realizes what her name means as her father tattoos her back. 

_“Your mother’s name was Elizabeth.”_

A derivative of Elizabeth; Liza, to Riza, a corruption. 

“You will carry on my work.”

_“You will carry my oath to God.”_

Alchemists are devout creatures.

 **X -** He comes back, and she can hear his frantic screaming from her room. 

“Riza! He needs a doctor!”

She gets up from where she was sitting, her brush lying innocently on the table. 

_Names are scars, titles are mantles._

“No one will be able to help him now Mr. Mustang.”

“Riza-”

“Can you keep a secret?”

_“Riza, never pick the purple flowers near the steam, okay?” Her mother’s smile was bright._

He stops in the door-frame. 

“You poisoned him, didn’t you?” The candlelight flickers across his face, casting it in shadow.

“If names are scars,” She whispers, “And titles are mantles, what do you call me?” 

“You named yourself.” He said, and she agreed.

 **XI -** Roy is a soldier in Ishval (He is matériel, actually, but the distinction really didn’t matter).

He is a State Alchemist, in Ishval.

He is a human weapon in Ishval, dark red blood coating his hands.

He is a murderer in Ishval.

He is called a hero, but he is not.

 **XII -** King Bradley. 

_To rule over a broad clearing._

Roy looks over the landscape of Ishval, broken and desolate. 

It is a fitting name.

He thinks of his own.

It is, perhaps, less fitting now than it once was.

 **XIII -** “Your name is ironic.” She says in the desert. 

“Is that so?” He asks with no humor. “Why is that?”

“You’ve never been pious.” It takes effort not to choke on his own sharp intake of breath.

 **XIV -** “I’ll follow you even into hell.” She says, and her scar itches ( ~~Their marks, her father's marks,~~ _his_ marks stain her like foxing on old paper). 

(She’ll protect him, she’ll die for him.)

_My oath unto God._

Riza reclaims her name from the ashes.

 **XV -** Riza lies on the ground, bright, red blood flowing from the slash across her throat to the edges of the chalk circle.

(In her state of fading between consciousness and unconsciousness, she cannot help but wonder if her blood had caused the circle to become cracked within the ring, and if so, would it then nullify the array?)

Roy stares back, and she looks up, begs him to realize what she’s trying to signal to him. 

“I will not do human transmutation.” Riza smiles, and closes her eyes.

Alchemists were tenacious creatures, but soldiers were worse.

 **XVI -** When Roy has his sight restored, he meets with Truth for the second time. 

“Why I am here?” He asks. “I’m not performing human transmutation, and I’m not trying to get my sight _back._ ” It smiles. 

“Aren’t you?”

“You can’t restore things from the Gate, you can only exchange. I’m getting sight _bestowed_ upon me. They’re different things.”

“Semantics.”

“Clearly not.” Silence reigns upon the space, and Roy waits for Truth to speak. 

“What a contradictory human you are Roy Kin Hei Soeng-Mustang.” 

“That is not my name.” Roy replies automatically, years of denying it not easily undone.

“Names,” Truth said, posture shifting. “Are scars, and their mark is not easily removed.”

 **XVII -** Riza leaned on him as they danced. “I’m not changing my name you know, yours is much too long.”

“Blame my mother for that then, not me. She’s the one who decided that giving me both a Xingese and Amestrian name was a good idea according to Aunt Chris.” He groused good-naturedly. “Still, it was kind of funny to see Fullmetal’s face when the priest said my full name out loud.”

“I think most everyone there reacted a little strangely when they found out. After all, it _did_ seem like you’d been hiding it from them.”

“Names can be dangerous things.” She looked up at him, and kissed his cheek. 

“They don’t have to be.”

**Author's Note:**

> Riza was a fun name to research in that apparently it has several different origins! 
> 
> If you follow the idea that it’s derived from the Arabic “Rida”, you get can get “virtuous”, “devoted to God”or “satisfaction”. If you follow the idea that it is derived from the Spanish “Teresa”, you get “to harvest”, if you believe it’s Greek then you can get “reaper”, and if you follow the idea posed by how Ls and Rs in Japanese are translated, then you get “my oath to God” as derived from the diminutive Liza, which is itself derived from Elizabeth.
> 
> (Also if you decide to go with the interpretation that Riza as a name is derived from a synonym for revetment (literally “riza”), then it means “metal cover protecting an icon”.)
> 
> Roy, comparatively was much simpler, even if his own name had a couple of curve balls thrown my way. So, there’s the obvious one, of the French word “roi” meaning king, but (and here’s the curve ball) apparently it is also derived from the Gaelic “Ruadh”, meaning “one with red hair.” 
> 
> As for his middle names, they stem from a headcanon of mine that Roy is Xingese on his mother’s side. Specifically, he’s Southern Xingese, my headcanon equivalent of being Cantonese, hence his name follows the Cantonese meaning and reading. “Kin” means pious, and “Hei” means sunlight. 
> 
> His mother’s last name Soeng is one of the Cantonese readings of the Mandarin “Tāng”, which I’m using as a reference to the Tang Dynasty, but can also be read as “hot water”. 
> 
> Before writing, I had considered giving Riza a middle name, but then I scrapped that when I realized just how much meaning I could squeeze out of her first name (Besides, Roy wears denial better than her anyways), and the list of references was getting way too long anyways, even without the addition of a middle name.


End file.
